


so wake me up when it's all over

by phae



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Clint joins the Bus, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-02-19 05:08:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2375798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phae/pseuds/phae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint wakes up in medical, but Phil's not there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. if at first

**Author's Note:**

  * For [totalnerdatheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/totalnerdatheart/gifts).



> Title is from Avicii's _Wake Me Up_.
> 
> This is set after the end of AoS Season 1, the idea being that the Bus team, once stationed at the Playground, start working to bring in what agents left in the cold that they can before Hydra takes them out.

The usual low-level panic sets in as Clint swims to consciousness amidst the distinctive hum of medical monitors. He fights to open his eyes, needs to take in his surroundings visually because his hearing is shitty even on a good day, but only manages to get one of them squinted open. His whole head feels swollen up like a balloon pumped full of too much helium, so the eye deal is probably due to a massive shiner. Awesome.

 

He blinks away the spots in his vision and starts a quick sweep of the room: high-end monitors on either side of him, so medical or a hospital; cramped room with only enough space between the white walls for the bed he’s lying on and the monitors flanking him, so more likely a SHIELD medical facility; no visitor’s chair pulled up close to the bed, so then not a SHIELD facility? Because otherwise Phil would be right there, he’s always right beside him when Clint comes to hooked up to a heart monitor.

 

Clint’s sense of panic jumps up a notch then, easily reflected by the audible increase in his heart rate, and he starts pulling tubes and wires off of his arms, struggling to sit up further than the reclined angle of the bed.

 

The door, barely a foot from the foot of the bed, slides open then, and a young woman comes rushing in, crying out, “No, no! Please don’t pull those out! You’ve only just woken up. You’ll need to remain under observation for quite a while, I’m afraid.”

 

Her accent is British, which doesn’t tell Clint all that much; SHIELD recruits internationally. She sets to straightening out the mess he’s made of all the lines connecting him to the various machines, and she has a stethoscope looped around her neck, so she’s maybe a nurse? Or a doctor? She’s dressed casually, skinny jeans and a smart top with a bowtie of all things, and she seems to be fairly young.

 

Clint’s more than a little bit confused, and confusion on top of panic does not for a cooperative Hawkeye make. He jerks his arm away violently when she moves to reinsert the IV-line he’d yanked out, and as she jumps back with a yelp, his opposite hand is groping around behind him for something sharp and pointy to grab or break off that he can use to defend himself. The door swooshes open again, and this time it’s at least a familiar face that enters.

 

Mel, of all people, strides into the room and comes around the other side of the bed to hold his arms down while the other lady cautiously steps back up to the bed.

 

“Clint, calm down,” Mel instructs, her voice the same measured, calming tone that seems to be her default. “You’re safe here. I promise. Let Dr. Simmons help you.”

 

“Where—” he tries to ask, but it turns out his throat is just as fucked up as the rest of him, and it comes out sounding as harsh as it feels and just the one word sends him into a coughing fit.

 

“We brought you to an off-grid secret base,” Mel informs him while Dr. Simmons brings up a cup of water and holds a straw to his lips.

 

Clint takes a few careful sips and then pulls away, shaking his head at Mel. “Phil—” he manages to drag out before the coughing starts again.

 

Mel’s face closes off for a worrying moment. People always seem to think she’s so hard to read, always with the death stare, but between her and Phil and Tasha, Clint’s become quite well-versed in seeing through so-called blank masks. And right now, Clint’s picking up some microexpressions from Mel’s face that tell him she’s bracing herself to deliver bad news. Clint steels himself accordingly.

 

“He’s onsite,” she finally replies. “He was called away for a conference call. But I’ll go let him know you’re awake now.” Mel straightens up and leaves with a nod to Dr. Simmons, and then it’s just the two of them in the cramped little room.

 

Dr. Simmons is all sympathetic smiles as she finishes cleaning up the mess he made, but Clint is too preoccupied with thoughts of Phil to pay her much mind now that Mel, at least, has vouched for the doc. ‘Cause Phil’s here, apparently, but not _here_ , and that just speaks volumes about how much shit Clint has landed himself in. He can’t recall anything about the op he must have been on when he got his ass handed to him, but if Phil’s giving him the cold shoulder, then Clint probably did something unnecessarily dangerous or reckless. Given that Phil's not even present for said cold-shouldering, chances are it was a fair bit of both.

 

By the time Dr. Simmons ducks back out of the room, Clint is frantically trying to shake some kind of memory loose from his brain. He tries to bring up the image of a mission file, attempts to recall the team he was assigned to, racks his mind for the weather reports he would have looked up while plotting out where to station his primary nest.

 

All it gets him is a pounding headache though, so when, half an hour later, Phil finally steps into the room, all Clint has to say for himself is, “’M sorry.”

 

Phil pulls up short at the end of the bed, regarding Clint with a confused frown. “What are you apologizing for?”

 

“Whatever I did to land in medical,” Clint rasps. “Can’t remember. Did I jump off somethin’?”

 

The creases on Phil’s forehead deepen. It just adds to the air of exhaustion around him. Even Phil’s suit looks tired; the jacket is unbuttoned and crooked across his shoulders, like he just threw it on in the hall without paying any attention to how it’s meant to lay. “Do you remember anything at all about the attack?” he asks.

 

“Not a wink.”

 

Phil pulls out his phone and starts fiddling with it. Clint makes a curious noise, not up to actually voicing the question with his throat so raw, and Phil says, “I’m just texting Simmons to let her know she needs to run some brain scans, make sure there’s no major swelling causing memory loss.” Clint’s pretty sure that if he was just sending a text, it wouldn’t be taking so long, but then he’s doped up on who knows what, so his sense of time might be a little off.

 

Phil finally slides his phone back into his pocket and then turns his attention back to Clint, straightening his shoulders like he does when he’s nervous. “I’m sure you have questions for me.”

 

Befuddled, Clint wonders aloud, “You’re not gonna tear me a new one? Or are you just waitin’ ‘til I’m sober enough to get it all?”

 

“What?” Phil’s face morphs with the free expression of his confusion, and it’s as open as he only ever lets himself be when they’re far away from SHIELD in the comfort of their own apartment.

 

“You weren’ here when I woke up,” Clint tries to explain as his words begin to slur. He’s not surprised, pain killers generally knock him out pretty easily, and he’s been awake for a pretty long time considering. “An’ you haven’ kissed me. You’re no’ even holdin’ my hand. Swear I’ll try notta do it ‘gain, whate’er I did.”

 

Phil takes a step toward him, his hand falling to rest on Clint’s shin. “Clint, no, it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything. You were ambushed.”

 

“So how come you're mad a’me, babe?” Clint whines, the agony of slowly healing injuries combining with the headache and encroaching exhaustion to leave him unrepentantly petulant.

 

“It’s—I’m not—” Phil stutters and his grip on Clint’s leg tightens in increments until he abruptly relaxes his hand and withdraws it back to his side. The loss of contact is worrying, and on some level, Clint registers the sick feeling in his stomach as heartache rather than nausea, but he’s slipping back under and holding onto consciousness to finish this conversation is a real struggle. “I’m just tired,” Phil continues, his voice gone flat. “Haven’t really been sleeping. I’m supposed to be sleeping now actually, but May said you were awake, so I figured I’d check in first.”

 

“Phil?” Clint whispers as he makes a poor attempt to stretch his hand out toward Phil. It mostly just twitches in his general direction.

 

Phil hesitates--obviously, which is wrong on all kinds of levels because Phil Coulson is _never_ hesitant unless it serves some purpose for an op--but he does take Clint’s hand after a moment. “Stop worrying. You’re half asleep already. Just rest for now, alright?”

 

Phil fades away with the room as Clint is dragged under by the persistent drugs flooding his system.


	2. take two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kayla asked for C/C with some Skye, and just in general I tend to assume she wants some feels. So we've got C/C angst plucking at the feels, and now Skye makes her appearance.

Clint comes to with only a few seconds worth of panicking the second time around. He’s exactly where he was when he passed out, no room change to confuse him when he’s already unsettled, and he feels a little clearer and achier, like the painkillers are wearing off. Phil, again, isn’t present, but there is someone sitting in the visitor’s chair, feet propped up on the bed atop his and a sleek laptop in her lap.

 

“Hi?” Clint grunts with a squinty-eyed stare.

 

The girl sitting next to him startles a bit but then grins when she meets his eyes. “Hey, you’re awake! Want some water? Or there’s ice chips. I was laid up about a month back, and I preferred the ice. Mostly for the crunch factor.”

 

She shifts her laptop onto the bed by Clint’s hip and then picks up two cups from the little tray-table attached to the bed. Clint blinks rapidly as his eyes dart from feature to feature on her face, turning back through all the SHIELD personnel profiles he’s glimpsed over the years trying to place her, but he comes up blank. She wiggles the cups in front of his face impatiently.

 

“Uh…”

 

She frowns and makes a considering sound before setting one of the cups back down. “We’ll stick with water for now. You don’t look like you’re up to chewing. I’m Skye, by the way.”

 

“Right,” Clint says hesitantly, eying her suspiciously even as she holds a straw to his lips and patiently waits for him to sip his fill.

 

“May made A.C. take a sleeping pill,” Skye, whoever she is, starts to explain. “And while he’s out, she’s in charge of the base, so she’s off handling boss-lady stuff. Simmons is in the next bay over, checking in with Fitz. Trip is…actually, I’m not sure where Trip is. He’s sneaky like that, sometimes. So that leaves me on Hawkeye Duty. Not like that’s any kind of tragedy. I mean, holy biceps Batman, you know?”

 

That—is a lot to take in all at once, and Clint’s not even sure he actually heard all of it. His motto in life, though, is to just go with the flow. It’s his second favorite rhyming cliché, right after: when in doubt, pinky out. “Only my buddies get to objectify me,” Clint settles on saying, his mouth twitching into the shape of a smirk, but it doesn’t hold.

 

“No worries,” Skye assures him. “I’m sure I’ll grow on you soon enough.”

 

“Like a fungus?”

 

“But a cute fungus!” Skye settles back in the chair by the bed, folding her legs up onto the seat. “Word is you conked your head and lost some time.”

 

“I guess.” Clint’s shoulders reflexively move into a shrug, but that’s—yeah, that’s a no-go for now. He winces and asks, “Any idea what happened to me?”

 

“Hydra. Not too surprising they’d go after you, in the grand scheme of things. I mean, you’re kind of a high-level target.”

 

“What do you mean _Hydra_?” Clint sputters. “Ah, fuck. Please tell me the eggheads in R &D didn’t seriously build a fucking time machine. Is Hitler back too?”

 

Skye leans forward to rest her elbows on the thinly padded mattress. “Was that really a thing? Oh, snap!” She falls back in her chair with a short laugh. “Totally grilling FitzSimmons about that later.”

 

“Woah, wait. So what happened with Hydra?”

 

“The usual.” Skye flicks her hand around dismissively. “They tried to kill you. You fought back. Got your ass kicked in the process. Don’t feel bad about it, though, it was like fifteen to one. You put up a good fight.”

 

“How’d I get here then? Wherever here is?”

 

“We’ve been trying to track down anybody left in the wind after the fall out,” Skye answers. Her easy attitude disappears for a moment then. “You’re one of the few we got to in time.”

 

Clint twists his head so he’s looking up at the ceiling and lets the silence settle over them for a while. He doesn’t really have a clue what’s going on outside this room, but it sounds beyond bad. Hell, there’s a kid sitting next to him sinking under the weight of self-blame that Clint still struggles with far more often than he admits. She doesn’t look or sound anything like a field agent, and he seriously hopes all this _we_ stuff is just generalizing. She shouldn’t be getting mixed up in the kind of shit that lays a seasoned agent out like this.

 

“S'this may be a stupid question,” he mutters after a bit. “But who’s we? Since when're Phil and Mel even stationed at the same base?"

 

“We’re A.C.’s hand-picked team,” Skye announces, her posture straightening and shoulders rolling back as she preens. “The Bus Team. Well, the Bus is kinda grounded for the time being, it’s a little too, uh, SHIELD-specific. Still the closest thing to home, though.”

 

Frowning, Clint carefully brings up a hand to rub at his temples in an effort to ease the tension building there. “I’m missing something here. I mean, obviously. But also the A.C. thing.” He mouths the letters to himself, trying to work through the hazy fog of lingering drugs in his system. “Wait, no, that’s Coulson. He lets you call him A.C.?” he asks incredulously.

 

“Well, _lets_ probably isn’t the right word for it, but I get away with it, yeah.” Skye’s grin fades away as she looks over with a worried expression. “So it’s looking like you’re missing more than just the attack like we first thought. I’m no expert or anything, but the Hydra stuff in general probably should have rung some bells. That was kinda big news.”

 

“Right,” Clint sighs. He feels like every bit of info he gets out of this conversation just sparks more questions that he’s not really sure how to phrase. There is something he hasn’t asked Skye about, though, and it’s arguably the most important thing right now. “Hey, uh, seeing as you’re awesome and chatty,” Clint says, tossing his best approximation of a charming grin Skye’s way. “You wouldn’t happen to know what’s up with Phil, would you? Is he okay?”

 

Skye runs a hand through her hair, pulling the long strands back away from her face. “You two are pretty close, right? Like, he was totally panicking in that not-panicking way he does when shit’s super-serious as soon as we decrypted the Hydra transmission and figured out you were the target. May said something about him being your handler for like ever, but she didn’t say much else.”

 

“You could say that, yeah,” Clint snorts. “We’re married.”

 

Skye openly gapes at him for a few good seconds before gathering her thoughts and snapping her mouth closed. “Okay, so, awkward? But also, that explains, you know, a lot.” Her voice trails away at the end, and she doesn’t elaborate past that.

 

They sit there uncomfortably for nearly a minute, Clint staring Skye down and Skye dodging his eyes, before Clint snaps. “Skye, I’m pretty sure I don’t actually know you, like, temporary amnesia aside, but I need you to do me a solid here and tell me what the fuck is going on. Why’s my husband avoiding me?”

 

“Right, sure.” Skye rubs her hands up and down her thighs. “Disclaimer, though? I don’t have the whole story, just a basic outline, really.” Clint evens his breathing, bracing himself for a bomb to hit, but there’s really no way to be prepared for the news Skye drops on him. “From the bits and pieces I've picked up, though? He was probably acting funny ‘cause of the whole him-dying-and-being-resurrected-under-suspicious-circumstances thing. Which I’m about 80% sure you weren’t in the loop on. The resurrection part, I mean.”

 

Clint’s heart monitor goes a little bit haywire at that point.


	3. third time's the charm

Clint comes to for the third time more than a little peeved because they damn well _sedated him_. Okay, yes, he was maybe freaking out a little bit, and that probably wasn’t so good given the general state of disrepair his body is in, but he had just been informed that his husband was dead-but-not-really, and he’d apparently had no idea.

 

Phil’s at least in the room this time, slumped over in the chair awkwardly, clonked out in an exhausted sleep.

 

A weird mix of emotions blindside Clint at the sight of Phil. Settled because Phil’s finally where he’s meant to be, at Clint’s side, watching over him while Clint can’t watch out for himself. Anger because apparently before this whole episode, he’d been made to think his husband was dead, and he doesn’t even know what month it is, so he shudders to think what year it might be, ‘cause who knows how long he’s been in the dark about that? Relief because Phil _is_ alive, right here, right now, and that’s always gonna be a good thing in Clint’s book. Betrayal because Phil obviously never sought him out after he recovered, just left him to mourn and, what, move on?

 

But the more Clint tries to untangle the mess of his feelings and work out the pieces of the puzzle he’s missing, the more everything coalesces into a resignation that sits heavy in his stomach.

 

Because something obviously happened between now and the last thing Clint clearly remembers—getting assigned to Pegasus and resolutely not pouting on the transport there just because he was probably going to miss their anniversary with such an open-ended assignment being shunted off on him, only to taxi into the hangar and discover that Phil had finagled his way into an assignment on the base as well. There was some kind of fight or something that left them at odds, something big enough that Phil decided to let his fake-death stand, so far as Clint was concerned.

 

And unfortunately, knowing himself as he does, Clint knows he has to have been the one to fuck things up between them. That’s always been his relationship M.O. after all.

 

He’s kind of shocked that Phil can even stand to fall asleep in this cramped little room with him now, actually. He was so obviously uncomfortable being here when Clint first woke up, Clint can decipher the signs now. He hadn’t been in that chair when Clint came to ‘cause that’s not actually his place anymore. He cut ties with Clint, pretty cleanly as far as faking one’s death can go.

 

And now that Clint’s weaned off the good drugs, he can see just fine, more than well enough to see that Phil’s left hand no longer sports the faint tan line from his ring, there’s no telltale bump marring the lay of his dress shirt where Clint’s dogtags used to hang. Does Clint even still have his own ring? It’s sure as shit not on his finger, but then, he’s in medical. He used to keep it in the hollowed-out sole of his boot when he was on a mission.

 

Idly, Clint wonders if they’re actually divorced, officially and all, not just a marriage dissolved by the presence of a death certificate.

 

“Stop,” a soft voice cuts through Clint’s musings, and he startles, jerking his head around at the sound too fast and it pulls a sore muscle in his neck. Phil leans forward to rest one arm on the bed, the other coming up so that he can massage at the spot under Clint’s pulse with his thumb. “Whatever you’re thinking, just stop and let me explain. Please?”

 

Clint opens his mouth to say something, but his breath catches on a choked off sob. He tries to lean away from Phil’s touch, except he doesn’t really have anywhere to go. He licks his lips, tongue setting all the little splits to stinging, and manages to whisper, “I don’t think I want you touching me right now.”

 

Phil’s must be too tired to bother with his usual pretenses because Clint catches the hurt expression flickering across his face loud and clear. He pulls his hand away but doesn’t lean back in the chair, just folds his arms on the edge of the bed and watches Clint with sad eyes.

“Is it okay if I talk? Explain my side of things?” he asks after a charged moment of silence.

Clint looks away, mostly because a sad Phil is a Phil that he wants to hug, and that’s not happening any time soon. But he nods in answer to Phil’s question because he wants to know where it all went wrong, needs to know where he messed up.

"There was a major attack—an actual alien invasion,” Phil begins quietly, his fingers tapping restlessly along the bed sheets. The words sound measured, rehearsed. Clint wonders how long he was out for this time, if Phil’s had long enough to plan this whole speech out. “You were captured and forced into aiding the other side, and I found myself possibly more than a little emotionally compromised, and I acted rashly. I died.” Clint flinches at the dry, matter-of-fact way Phil says it, like it was some mundane, everyday occurrence. “But then they brought me back, which is where things get complicated. And you’ve been off the grid, pretty much since the Chitauri clean up--"

 

"I don't care about all that shit,” Clint snaps, cutting Phil off. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to breathe deep to calm himself down, but his ribs twinge in warning so he lets all his air out with a huff. “I mean—I do. Obviously. It's all, like, important and shit, but that's not what I need to know right now. What happened to—with us?"

 

"I was getting to that. It's all tied up together in a giant tangle of—"

 

"Lies?" Clint bites out, glaring down at his hands curled into fists around the sheets.

 

Phil sighs wearily. "Most likely."

 

"What the hell, Phil?” Clint demands, his voice scratching up and out of his throat painfully when he tries to put the full force of a shout behind it. “What coulda gone so wrong that we'd get a divorce, or, or whatever happened? It couldn'ta been the job, 'cause that's always been there, it's never been that big a issue. You're my fucking everything, dude. My best friend, my partner, my moral compass. I can't come up with anything you coulda done that I wouldn't forgive. So—so it was me right? I did something that made you leave me?"

 

"Fuck, _no_!” Phil reaches out and takes Clint’s face between his hands so he can get Clint to look him in the eye, absently swiping away the tears slowly rolling out of the corners of Clint’s eyes. “I'm the one that screwed up here, not you."

 

"So, what? You cheated on me?” Clint asks desperately. “'Cause, okay, that sucks, but that's a thing we can fix, right? Unless...I mean, unless you fell outta love with me and into it with someone else?"

 

“No!”

 

“Then what _happened?_ ”

 

"I don't _know_!" The both fall quiet in the wake of Phil’s barked admission, but the way they’re both panting heavily fills the empty space between them.

 

Phil rocks forward out of the chair, one knee coming up onto the bed, and leans over so that he can press his forehead to Clint’s, his hands still cupping Clint’s cheeks. “Just—listen. _Please_.”

 

Clint bites down on his tongue to keep himself quiet and just nods, moving Phil’s head in tandem with his own.

 

“Nick had me brought back with the TAHITI project,” Phil continues in a hushed tone. “It was one of the avenues we were exploring in conjunction with the Avengers Initiative. We needed a way to heal the kind of injuries the members of that sort of first-response team were likely to incur. And at the time of the invasion, the TAHITI project showed the most promise. Rapid cellular regeneration, enhanced healing rates, the serum that subjects were injected with was like a panacea.”

 

Phil’s eyes slip closed, and even this close, Clint can still make out the tense lines around his mouth. “But there were very serious side effects, in terms of the mental aspects, and the subjects turned violent and hostile, towards themselves and others. The only way to help them was to completely wipe their minds, implant new memories of civilian lives and let them live those lives out in peace. I advised the Director to shut the project down, that it wouldn’t accomplish what we needed, and I assumed my recommendation was taken to heart.

 

“I had no say in my resurrection, and, as my medical proxy, it seems that you didn’t either. They brought me back against my wishes and performed a more personalized mind-wipe, I’m assuming in an attempt to keep me in the field. They gave me all these false memories, but they _feel_ real. It’s only recently, the past few months, that the blocks or whatever they are have started breaking down, and there’s not much rhyme or reason to it—”

 

“Wait, so you’re saying they erased me from your memory?” Clint brings a hand up, just to drag his fingers down the side of Phil’s face, but there’s a monitor attached to his forefinger, and the rest of his hand’s wrapped up in bandages, so he can’t feel more than the faint warmth radiating off of his skin.

 

Phil frowns, and Clint’s fingers slide over the little rolls it pushes to the side of his mouth. “No. Not…as such. That would have been too complicated, given that I was put back into a similar high-ranking position once I’d recovered. There weren’t any kind of restrictions on my movements or who could interact with me, so that probably would have blown the thing sky-high the first time someone asked about you. Not that anyone did, really. Which, I thought just made sense because—” Phil stops mid-sentence and his whole face seems to crumple in on itself for a moment as he ducks his head down to Clint’s shoulder.

 

Clint scrabbles at the back of his head, but he can’t get any kind of grip with the bandages in his way. He has to squeeze his hands tight around Phil’s neck to drag his head back up, and his wrenches in his chest because that’s Phil’s trying-not-to-cry face. He peppers scratchy little kisses across his cheeks, his nose, his lips, and after a minute, Phil finally starts to smile. It’s faint, but Phil’s smiles usually are. Shaking his head, Phil pulls back, and Clint’s left grasping empty air, calling out, “Phil? Babe?”

 

Phil turns away, but he puts out a hand that falls high on Clint’s thigh and rummages through the pockets of his suit jacket that’s thrown over the back of the chair. When he twists back around, he’s rubbing something between his fingers, and it’s a long second before Clint recognizes the tarnished silver band.

 

“I, uh, found this in your bag. I have this memory, one of those unfortunately crystal clear ones, you know?” Phil huffs a self-deprecating laugh. “Of getting divorce papers while I was laid up after New York. I’m pretty sure that’s another one of the one’s they planted in my head. It’s—difficult to tell them apart most days. But given that you’re still carrying this around—I’m going to assume you never actually sent those. I’ve got Skye poking around in the old HR files just in case. Nick’s always been nothing if not thorough.”

 

He stars down at his fingers playing with Clint’s wedding ring for another few seconds, and then he holds it out to Clint, waiting for Clint to reach out so that he can press it into his palm and close Clint’s fingers around it securely. “But anyway. That’s why I assumed no one was asking about you. After what happened with Loki…as far as I knew, you disappeared, and I was lead to believe that ending things with me was a necessary step in getting over what happened when you were abducted.”

 

“So—we didn’t fight? You didn’t leave me? I mean, like, on purpose?” Clint asks, clutching the ring to his chest but keeping his eyes on Phil’s face.

 

He shakes his head, the quirk of his mouth turning rueful. “Not so far as I know.”

 

Clint nods absently as he lets that all sink in, wanting to ask one more question, just to clarify things, but scared to say the actual words. “And you still—” he croaks, “You still wanna be with me, right?”

 

Phil looks down at him, his whole expression soft and warm. And ‘cause he’s a fucking mind reader, he gets what Clint’s really asking, and he answers without a second’s pause. “I am always going to love you, Clint. And I am always going to stay right here by your side.”

 

Clint blinks back a new swarm of tears, sniffing manfully. “Cool. That’s cool. And, you know, ditto.”

 

Phil shifts to sit in the chair again, but he keeps his hands on the bed, one curled around the wrist closest to him and the other rubbing up and down Clint’s thigh over the sheets. He clears his throat and schools his expression, the trademark Agent Coulson persona sliding back into place, so Clint knows they’re moving from the personal to the professional, at least in terms of subject matter. “In light of the amnesia, I’ve worked with Simmons to come up with a few recovery options for you. We can get you set up with an apartment, nearby if you’d like, set up an appointment schedule, let you get back on your feet at your own pace away from all the stress of this place—”

 

Clint scoffs loudly, nevermind that it tears at his raw throat. “Fuck that noise,” he insists. “I ain’t going anywhere. You jump, I jump, Jack.”

 

Phil’s head tips back in exasperation, but there’s no hiding the smile creeping around the edges of his mouth from Clint. “Seriously? We both hate that damn movie.”

 

“My pop culture knowledge is all scrambled up,” he replies with a haughty tilt to his chin. “What year is it?”

 

“Stop,” Phil groans, his shoulders quaking faintly with suppressed laughter.

 

“Never,” Clint promises, waiting until Phil’s looking back at him with his full attention before pointedly slipping his ring back where it belongs. “At this point, we’re even past that ‘til death do us part’ bullshit, so you better get used to it.”

 

Phil smiles, and it’s his regular Clint-you’re-a-dummy-but-I-love-you smile, and he finally leans in to give Clint his congratulations-you-didn’t-die kiss. And yeah, there’s still a gaping hole in Clint’s memory, he still has no idea how much time he’s missing, he’s still laid up in medical with more of his parts injured than not, but his husband is sitting in the visitor’s chair next to his bed, ready to threaten Clint into submission should he attempt an early escape from medical, so in the grand scheme of things, all is right in Clint’s world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blink and you'll miss 'em quotes are from _Titanic_ and _Jumanji_.


End file.
